Lighthouse

My standard drawing sheet (layout) is 24x36, and I make drawing scale and text size appropriate to that size sheet. However, zoning and conservation review boards typically require 11x17 drawings, so they can fold them and mail them out to members. If I simply reduce my "D" drawings to that size, the text becomes unreadable (too small). I end up having to manually resize the text, which wastes a lot of time. I sort of understand that annotation sets would address this, but wouldn't I still be creating two completely independent sets of drawings (large and small)? Has anyone else had this issue and figured out a clever solution? thanks!

Jim, one other question, as that looks like a good printer for me- can it print 24 x36? it seems from the literature that the max size is 22x34. I do some big houses that need the larger size in order fit on a sheet at 1/4" scale.

Hi Lew, Yes, I always create a pdf first with PDFill. What is frustrating is that it will work one day and not the next, and nothing has changed (not even restarting the computer). It's not a mechanical issue, just some driver problem. It either shows the printer offline, or prints half a sheet, and then prints the other half of the drawing on another sheet.

Hey Jim, thanks for the reply. Do you think this printer would fit on my old designjet 500 stand? Seems redundant to buy a printer with a stand when I have a good one already. My stand measures 31 1/4" outside to outside, and seems to clip into the bottom of the printer. But maybe the 120 has no provision to sit on a stand? Also, how is the color quality for a rendering? (if you use it that way). thanks

I'm about ready to give up on my designjet 500. Even though the machine operates perfectly, I cannot figure out a way to consistently get it to work with my computer. It's mystifying how a driver can work one day and not the next, when nothing has changed, but I have wasted too many hours downloading and deleting new drivers to want to continue on this route. Planned obsolescence! Tragic to take a perfectly good machine to the dump. Anyway, I'm looking for printer recommendations. I print 24x36" prints, and like to use color to highlight various things. Not high volume, but I like to do test prints before sending files to the copy shop, and my copy shop charges an absurd amount for large format color prints. If I'm going to upgrade, I would ideally get something that could printer color well enough that I could do a page of renderings that wouldn't look like crap. Now the hard part- I would prefer not to spend more than $1500, but am happy to get a used machine, provided it's not so old that I have the same kind of driver problems that I have now. I would like at least windows 7 compatibility, without having to use some aftermarket driver. While I have owned HP for many years, I'm very open to trying a new brand. Thanks much for any suggestions!

Thanks so much!!! I checked that box when I was experimenting and forgot to uncheck it.

Help,I have read everything online to no avail! I have a house with lots of exterior walls, that I want to be different materials and textures. I know that I can click on an individual wall and change it's material, but that is really time-consuming in this plan with so many walls, when I want to experiment with different siding colors and textures. So I want to be able to use the eyedropper to copy a wall material and paste it onto another wall. The problem I'm having is that when I use the eyedropper, it just changes the color of the new wall, not the material. For example, I have a wall made of horizontal wood siding. On a different wall, the exterior wall material is brushed aluminum sheets. When I use the eyedropper to copy the aluminum, and then paint it onto the wood sided wall, it just changes the color of the wood siding, but i can still see the siding. It doesn't replace the wood siding with the aluminum sheet. Is there a quick way to copy the material of one wall and paste it onto another, without having to open up each wall and choose the materials? I know I have done this before, but now it won't work. btw, I have tried all the different material painter modes Thanks

Hi, I'm somewhat of a newbie to ray tracing, but I do get the basics about using real lights or supplemental lights. On this image, I have this strange bright spot on the floor that I can't get rid of. It is not the sun, as I have moved the sun around and it doesn't affect the spot. There are no real or supplemental lights on the ceiling above. What could be causing it? It would be difficult to fix in photoshop because of the grain on the wood floor. Thanks render problem.pdf

Any autocad experts out there know how to convert GIS data in the following formats into either dxf or dwg to import into CA? I have the data as dbf, qix, shp, and shx file formats. thx

I'm trying to draw an object that is angled in plan and in section. If I draw a PS in plan, I can angle the plan part, but I can't angle it in section. If I draw the PS in elevation, I can angle the section, but not the plan. I have tried using PS, sloped soffits, and ceiling planes. The reason I'm doing this is to create an tapered edge to a roof which is angled in plan. I used a shadow board, but it does not follow the angle of the plan, and just protrudes square off the fascia. So I was going to create the roof edge with a PS, but I encountered the issue above. Simplified test plan is attached. tapered roof edge.zip

Hi, I have a surveyor dwg file with terrain contours, existing house, stone walls, etc. I would like this modeled in Chief first as existing conditions, and then modified for the new design. I need it done in the next day or two. I was planning to do it myself but I'm not great at terrain. I tried to attach dwg, but this file type cannot be attached (I can email it). If you are interested I will send you the files. I don't need plants, etc. just the contours, retaining walls and driveway.

thanks, I copied the lat/long from some website, but I guess they had it wrong. That fixed it (although, strangely, even with the correct coordinates it cast shadows at 5 pm when the sun has already set)

I have followed instructions for plotting the sun angle but getting strange results. I set my north arrow correctly relative to the house and lot. I put in the latitude and longitude for west of Boston MA. I chose Dec 20 2015 at various times of day and it seemed a bit off. To test, I chose 7pm. When I hit "make shadow" it shows a shadow at 7pm (screen shot attached) even though the sun sets at about 4:15pm. How can there be a shadow?

woops- here's an image instead

I called tech support and they said I could turn my terrain into a symbol, and then adjust the elevation. That works! I will post some pics after I finish the model. I'm trying to create a parabolic roof for a contemporary house. I can't figure out a way to do it with roof tools, but I can create a parabola using a terrain perimeter and then change the material to roofing. However, I can't figure out a way to turn the terrain into some kind of object that I could put on top of the building. It appears that you can only create one terrain perimeter per plan, so I can't use the one I created as a roof because I also need to have an actual terrain at the ground level. I've attached a sample plan just of the parabola. It is a square, with two adjacent edges at 100 elevation, and the opposite corner at 200, which creates the dish. Can anyone think of a way to use the terrain perimeter as a roof, or is there any other way in CA to create a dished surface? I need to create about 6 different roof shapes this way on the same plan. (don't ask why :-) ) parabolic roof.zip

the pdf of the layout is attached xxxx-Layout.pdf

I've wasted 2 hours on this one so far-- I sent a 15 page layout to be printed as individual pdf's. 14 of them look fine, one of them the line weights are too light. I have looked at the details that are on that page (that is too light) and they have identical settings to ones on other pages that look fine. I've tried sending it to different layout pages but get the same result- this one page of details seems to print at a different line weight. For the sake of simplicity, I have recreated the problem in a one page layout. I have included the following, in case anyone can take a look at it: The plan (xxxx) that is sent to the layout The layout (xxxx layout) The pdf of the layout. (I can't upload this for some reason so I will upload it in another post) Note: the item shown on the layout is a cad detail called "section 4" in the plan. When section 4 is open, detail #14 in the center of the page was sent to the layout at 1 1/2" scale. I have put some notes on detail 14 indicating the line weight of a couple items and how they appear wrong in the pdf. Thanks much to anyone that can help! xxxx.zip layout.zip

thanks a lot for the replies, I will take the plunge!

I have an older HP Designjet 500 that works fine with windows 7&8. I would like to upgrade to Windows 10 (for other reasons), but am concerned that the printer won't work with 10. I've had bad experiences in the past where I've had to abandon printers after upgrading Windows, as there is no driver support. Does anyone have this plotter, and can you use it with 10? thanks

sometimes called a "hood"

With much help (thanks again) I managed to import topo data into my plan and tweak it to match the new design. Now I'm struggling with curved retaining walls and flat regions. I can't raise my curved retaining walls, and I can't create a compound curved shape (in plan) for my flat parking area. is there a way to turn a polyline into a flat region? How do you adjust the height? Is there a way to simply delete all terrain in a specified area? There are answers to some of these questions in the documentation, but none of the answers seems to work. For example, it says that a curved retaining wall will have a square edit handle to change the height in elevation view, but all I get is diamond handles. It says you can open the flat region dbx to change elevation, but I dont get an elevation tab in the dbx. Anyone know how to do this stuff? Plan is attached and marked up. thx! philip final with smooth siding.zip

thanks to all. I finally got it to work by simply copying the contours and pasting them (unblocked, as they refused to block) into the new plan, without the terrain perimeter, which I created in the new plan. The positioning was insanely hard, but that's another story. Now, if I could just figure out how to raise my curved retaining wall....

I did try it, however when I inserted the new terrain perimeter into my new plan it was a tiny 2" square. So I'm wondering if it didn't come in at the right scale, or didn't copy correctly, or ...

I did all that, and got as far as imported the terrain perimeter and contours. However, the contours don't really fit in the perimeter, which seems odd. Also, the perimeter seems to be a different size that the one in the survey. Was this just a temp perimeter that you created? I have attached the real architectural plan, with your TP and contours on left, the house plan in middle, and a copy of the survey on the right. Could you position the new terrain onto the house plan? I'm happy to pay for this, if it is turning into a pain for you. thx philip final with smooth siding.zip

Right, I know how to move the plan around, but my issue is: Is there a way to take the revised plan that you created (that has the corrected elevation data and looks great) and import that into my architectural plan? As far as I know, I can only import a CAD file, not a chief plan. I tried converting your plan to a dwg. but lost all the elevation data. Were you suggesting that I make the changes on the original cad file and import that? Or is there some way to import the plan that you created?